Titanic 2012

“Even so… even knowing they’d be coming… it’s a shocker when they show up.”

Both men had done dives to recover bodies; David knew what Jacob’s remarks truly meant.

They’d also been cautioned to be aware that if any humans had sealed themselves into the airtight compartments here, that their bodies might well be preserved, given the sheer cold that these depths enjoyed.

As they continued down the stairwell, pulling along hand over hand, going from upper to lower decks, the passageways grew larger, roomier—just the opposite before Titanic’s dive to the ocean floor—as the larger staterooms and roomier decks above were now crushed.

As David glided through the corridors, careful to keep Jacob ahead of him, he recalled additional information from Declan Irvin’s journal the night the Titanic went down—after Ransom, Declan, and Thomas were able to convince the captain and officers that their duty did not begin and end with Titanic but extended to the human race. He recalled some of the exacting entries now, even as he worked to locate the treasures and the horrors lurking within Titanic. His thoughts were abruptly halted when Jacob suddenly stopped ahead of him before an enormous green wall—a cargo bay door, but not just any cargo door. It was the entryway to the much ballyhooed, sought-after turn of the Century automobiles housed within.

David knew that 1911 seals could not hold up to the punishing pressures brought on by Titanic’s plunge to here. So on the way down, with seals compromised, water would have flooded the compartment, drowning anyone who may’ve taken refuge there, thinking it a sealed compartment and safe to support life that much longer. But when the enormous ship struck bottom with such force as it had, the door itself should have exploded outward. As it was, the door appeared in this watery world to be considerably warped instead. Warped in such a manner as to have re-sealed itself, thus creating a dead zone wherein the water would become toxic and couldn’t support life. Over time, the microorganisms in the water would have exhausted all oxygen in the water, or die off from inability to adapt to the temperature of the trapped water or the higher pressure or both. There’d be nothing alive in the room, yet it’d be filled with water. He knew that dead zones in free-standing water were due to temperature gradients, causing salinity to increase in a ground-floor area that didn’t get swirled with eddies and tides, locked in as it were, no support for life whatsoever. Only toxic water, deadly in and of itself, denying any sort of life the requirements to flourish. Life in all its myriad forms required a formula—a combination of elements—proper temperature, depth, and oxygen—in order to survive. To deny any single element meant death prevailed even on a microscopic level. And in Titanic’s dead zones, not a single such element existed.

the deadzones in free standing water are usually due to temperature gradients causing salinity to increase, and being in a depression in the 'ground' so it doesn't get swirled up.

Mendenhall and David quickly determined that the warped-shut door had once moved easily for workmen on a track, requiring only a human hand to throw a switch for it to slide to one side, but no more. Now it was covered in the work of viable organisms on this side of the door, organisms that left the same sort of rusticles as they’d observed on the outer hull.

The mild current that flowed through the corridors here gained no entry into the hold, and neither did the divers. The door blocked them as well as the would-be migration of any organisms. Stymied, Jacob began burning away at the rusticles with his laser knife, seeking a handle or hold on the door.

Jacob even shouted obscenities at the rusticles and at the door as he worked on them with his laser knife, cutting away at the section around the area he knew from his studies where a manual door handle must be. He shouted at David as he did so, “Help me! Cut along the warped edges where the seams are!”

As David watched, the sight of Jacob laser-cutting about all the edges of the door formed the image of a man trying to break into a bank vault.

“Help me out here!” Jacob shouted again at David, who’d held back. “If we can loosen the door just enough to squeeze through, then—”

“Then we run the risk of ripping our suits and implosion, Jacob. You’ve gotta calm down!”

Jacob’s excitement over the find was mirrored in the cheers from Scorpio above, but also tempered with warnings from Dr. Entebbe about Jacob’s vital signs, which were clearly over the top by now.

“We can make another dive tomorrow, Jacob—return with the right tools needed to do the job properly!” David’s plea went unheeded as Mendenhall was in a frenzy to have a look inside, to see what was behind the enormous green door.

In fact, David realized that the other man’s sudden frenzy belied the notion he was some sort of monster. Jacob was treading water before the cargo hold door diligently working to weaken its ‘hold’ on the secrets awaiting them.

There was no doubt this was the place as the number 1-1748 loomed above the giant door framed in their lights. David recognized the digits as the same as those in their training material and Titanic’s manifest.

All this shimmered in the water before them, and behind the huge sliding door to the cargo area awaited Dr. William O’Laughlin’s Renault Town Car among dozens of other sports models and touring cars. What kind of condition might the submerged automobiles of 1912 be in? There remained the question, even so, would the motor cars of that era be museum quality or smashed to pieces with the dive? Or will they have been spared—anchored as they had been during the plunge.

“You realize where we are?” asked Jacob, burning through the jammed door, his impatience somehow showing through his dive suit. As his laser knife worked at amazing speed to destroy any remaining integrity to the door, Mendenhall was paying no heed to anyone. “It’s coming!” he shouted. “We’ll be inside soon, Captain Forbes!”

Forbes came over, “all right but just a cursory look at this point, gentlemen.”

David, who’d been working with his own laser knife, had destroyed any hold the door had on his side. He replaced the laser in its holster as it was apparent that the big green door was done for. They barely had to push inward with their combined weight to have it not simply open but to topple slowly in the dead zone water, shakily, eerily at first before giving way and striking the bottom of the cargo hold itself. This gave the men a first glimpse of the shadowy, dark outline of a row of anchored automobiles in this, their hundred-year-old prison.

“Careful, Jacob!” David shouted, seeing a ragged section of the green door bob up at the other man as if retaliating. But Mendenhall didn’t slow his rush toward the prize, oblivious to the danger inches below him.

“Leave it for tomorrow’s dive, man!” David said in his most commanding voice. “Captain, Dr. Entebbe, will you please order Mendenhall off!”

But Jacob Mendenhall appeared as a man possessed at this point as he struggled through the brackish water with its limited visibility. There was no slowing or stopping him and the orders coming from above fell on deaf ears.

David realized that what they had seen of the cars before was merely the tip of the show here beneath the dark waters. He also felt terribly small here in this huge dead zone area, while just ahead of him Jacob continued to rush toward the prized items he so wanted to claim for the expedition—dangerously so. More horrid thoughts of how easily their space-age suits might be compromised filled David’s mind, returning him to that damnable sub in the Sea of Japan. Still, all seemed well enough before the sight of not one row but four or five rows of anchored vehicles here with them. All were rather miraculously preserved. The moment recalled to David the time he’d visited China to see the terra cotta warriors unearthed after thousands of years and now the archeological find of the last century. He thought the cars aboard Titanic, once tidied up and placed in the Smithsonian would be the find of this century—and his name would be among those who’d recovered them. Pride filled him at this moment. He certainly understood Mendenhall’s insistence on gaining access and the other man’s boyish excitement now.

His reverie was broken when Jacob, beside him and staring at their find, said in dry humor, “Not even that mummy and its sarcophagus over at the aft section can compare to this, eh, David?” Jacob slapped him on.

“You have no idea just how close that damned door came to wreaking havoc on you, my friend!” David informed Jacob.

But Jacob’s and David’ combined lights and cameras illuminated almost the entire square of twenty automobiles in fixed rows, very much anchored to the floor with chains that’d held them in place for the horrendous